


your heart like twigs

by coricomile



Category: Bandom, BioShock, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 14:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4183134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coricomile/pseuds/coricomile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick taps the butt of his needle gun to his rounded chin, yellow eyes scanning the hall. He smiles, and it’s beautiful in a way nothing else in the city is. He aims his gun like a dowsing rod and begins to walk, Pete close on his heels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your heart like twigs

At the tender age of fifteen, Patrick is the oldest of all the Little Ones. He’s small and quick and clever, all nimble fingers and cunning mouth, shining and bright in the dull cage of Rapture. His blue veins form a map under the thin, translucent layer of skin. He’s plump in the cheeks and middle from snacking on discovered chips and cakes and snuck bottles of bad, expired beer. His mouth is forever open, a blood red smear across the white, white canvas of his face. He would be a beautiful boy if it weren’t for the eerie yellow glow of his eyes.

Pete has been with him since he himself was a child. It feels almost wrong to escort the boy through the halls of Rapture on his nightly mission. To endanger him so recklessly. Pete’s heavy in his suit of armor, drill in one hand, the other raised to shock any junked up splicers that are stupid enough to come near.

Patrick’s dressed in a pair of too long pinstripe pants and a stained white dress shirt. The shirttails are untucked, the top two buttons undone. He glows a soft blue as he passes by a window. Outside, a shark swims unhurriedly by.

Rapture. An underwater prison filled with beasts and corpses and junkies. Pete was born into it, a 1940 vintage, and he hears that, once upon a time, it had been beautiful and rich, thriving with life. With happiness. He doesn’t see the happiness or the life. All he sees is rotting furniture and blood and the ruins of plasmids run wild.

“I feel an angel,” Patrick says dreamily. Pete steps closer, the metal thunk of his boots smacking against the hardwood floor echoing. He touches a hand to Patrick’s shoulder, the snap crackle of electricity around it hissing as his fingers slide over the dirty cotton of the boy’s shirt. “Where?” He asks, eyeing the room. He’s never been able to find them before Patrick, never been able to tell one festering corpse from another. Part of why he was chosen to be a protector and not one in need of protection.

Patrick taps the butt of his needle gun to his rounded chin, yellow eyes scanning the hall. He smiles, and it’s beautiful in a way nothing else in the city is. He aims his gun like a dowsing rod and begins to walk, Pete close on his heels.

The thing about Little Ones is that they usually die young. They’re vessels for the beast, meant to be carriers of ADAM and nothing more. Their lives are dangerous, and their protectors are the only thing that stands between a dazed Little One and the splicers. All of them, every last one, are just children turned into tiny monsters. Patrick is not a monster, and Pete refuses to let him die.

The corpse, Patrick’s angel, is spread out on the floor at the base of a hallway, staring up at the ceiling with its dead eyes. Patrick smiles brightly and drops to his knees, touching the corpse's face tenderly, like it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He trails gentle fingertips against the slowly rotting cheek, down to the ragged places where the corpse's jaw had once been, singing quietly to it.

"Do your thing so we can get back," Pete urges, eying the bend in the hall warily. Patrick's humming cuts off as he touches the point of the needle to the corpse's chest.

"It'll only hurt a little," he says before jerking forward, pushing the needle through skin and muscle and sternum. The crack of bone echoes through the hall.

A Little One collecting is like feeding time. Splicers- _junkies_ , Pete thinks bitterly- desperate for ADAM, for fixes that are becoming rarer and rarer as the city decays, can smell the chemicals in the air, can hear the quiet mumblings of the children as they talk the corpses to rest. Pete tightens his fingers around his drill and waits.

They're lucky, in a way. The only attacker comes when Patrick's yanking the needle from the corpse's chest, eying the thick of the blood in its glass vial. The splicer's eyes narrow in on it and it screeches, running forward in a rapid line.

Patrick doesn't move when Pete steps around him, doesn't stop unscrewing the back of the vial with those deft little fingers. Pete holds up his drill and pulls the trigger, turning his head away. The sound of bones and skin twisting as the splicer runs himself into it makes Pete's stomach churn. He doesn't look back at Patrick until he hears the sound of the vial being screwed back on.

"I'm sleepy," Patrick says, leaning into Pete's legs. He looks up, and there's a smear of rusty color across his cheek. Pete wipes it away with his thumb and ignores Patrick's soft smile.

Once upon a time, he could carry Patrick on his back. He could lift him up and settle him down on the cool edges of his bulky armor, safe from whatever might come. Now though, Patrick stands not quite as tall as him, heavy even for someone his age. Once upon a time, Patrick could fit into the tunnels made for the Little Ones, could climb through the walls and curl up and nap until the ADAM was absorbed into his bloodstream. The engineers hadn't planned on any of the Little Ones growing quite so large.

Pete escorts Patrick through the city, cautious. The thick, acrid smell of fresh ADAM still lingers around Patrick like a beacon. A hovercamera passes by idly, the hum of its helicopter blades loud enough to cover the mumblings of whatever song Patrick's singing. His voice is sweet and clean, and if Pete closes his eyes, he can almost see the city glowing and golden, Rapture as it was supposed to be.

The nurses in the nursery smile at Patrick as he wanders into the sleep ward, his yellow eyes gone soft. His skin is hot under Pete's hand, burning through his shirt as his body fights the infection. He smiles at Pete again once Pete removes his helmet, eyes going sore at the sudden flood of light.

"Sleep with me?" He asks, and Pete nods before the nurses can turn him away.

Patrick has a room for himself, which is somewhat unheard of. Pete sees the mirrors, the cameras in the corners of the room, and knows that this is no special treatment. Patrick's a study, another case to crack. If they find out what makes him tick, then they can reproduce it, create a new generation of Little Ones that are stronger, that live longer.

There are three little boys playing in Patrick's room, coloring on the wood of the floor with stubby crayons. They blink up at Pete, their matching yellow eyes wide as he removes his suit piece by piece. Their protectors have come and gone, dead in the body of Rapture, rotting away. Soon, they'll have new caregivers, new people to stand behind. The boys scamper off as Patrick climbs into his bed, still fully dressed. He's gone pale, the light in his eyes dull. Pete's chest aches as he skims out of the last of his armor, open and exposed without it. Patrick's another tool to them, another gear in the workings of the city.

"Sing me a lullaby," Pete says after he's crawled into the spaces Patrick's left for him. He's small for his age, and Patrick's smaller, but Pete's back is still pressed to the cold metal wall, patches of rust cutting in through his undershirt. Patrick hums, fitting himself between Pete's arms like he always has.

The fever makes him stupid, cuts away the sharp lick of a boy that Pete's come to know, words evading him, movements slow and sedate, like he's forgotten how to command his muscles. It makes a fire burn low in Pete's stomach, makes his heart twist. If the splicers don't take Patrick away from him, the ADAM may.

The head nurse watches through the observational window as Patrick tucks his head under Pete's chin, as he hums himself to sleep, the rapid-fire _thump, thump_ of his heart slowing to something manageable. Pete barely refrains from yelling at her, from asking _how can you do this to a child?_ It'll only serve to get him handed to the dogs and, without him, Patrick is free game.

Pete flattens his palm against the rapidly cooling expanse of Patrick's back and holds him tightly. One day, he'll find a way out for both of them. He'll fix Patrick, find a cure for the disease eating at his insides, and get them to the forever away surface. They'll be happy there, outside of Rapture's closed in spaces, away from the secrets and the stench of death. 

That's someday, though, when Pete's older, maybe wiser, and strong enough to take the city down on his own. Until then, he curls tight around Patrick and wills the fever away.


End file.
